Teaching The Mirror To Deceive
By looking at Truth and Bright Water by Thomas King, one can see that the theme of appearance versus reality is very important because through the use of magic realism and various characters, King suggests that everything is not necessarily as it seems.
Starting with the base of my project, I chose the colours on the front of the novel, but also because they represent many different ideas. Although all significant, yellow is important because it exemplifies honour and loyalty. Throughout the novel, it seems as though Soldier is loyal to Tecumseh, however at the end of the novel, the dog chooses to follow Lum off the bridge, instead of staying with Tecumseh. Yellow is also a reminder of the character Lucy Rabbit, who King developed to be fairly superficial. She believes that appearance is essential, which is why she chooses to dye her hair blonde to look like Marilyn Monroe. White represents the hope that Tecumseh possesses when it comes to his father, Elvin. Tecumseh wants to believe his father when he says he’ll fix a car for his mother, or build a chair for his friend, when in reality Tecumseh knows Elvin is unreliable. Red is representative of danger and is said to be emotionally intense. I associate this with the character Lum. Lum is an interesting character because it is always uncertain which side of his personality will be present, whether it be his determined side, his “baby” side or his violent side. Black almost always represents uncertainty, of which is very apparent in the novel; uncertainty of the person on the Horns, uncertainty about the mystery man in Helen and Cassie’s lives, the uncertainty that Tecumseh feels about being a young adult and having to deal with all of these issues. I placed the river through the piece because although it’s a small theme, I believe the river and water to be a powerful symbol. Water distorts reality through reflection, refraction and diffraction, all of which can severely affect the real image.
As for the items I included, the grass and the paintbrush symbolize Monroe Swimmer’s attempt to make the prairies look “as if the church [had] never existed” (251). Using Monroe’s character, King promotes the idea that sometimes a false impression can be beneficial. In history, churches represent the loss of native culture to Aboriginals. I believe that as part of his restoration, Monroe was trying to return a piece of lost culture to his hometown. As a continuation of his restoration, Monroe made large iron buffalo in hopes of returning the native species back to their land. Although “they look sort of real” (144), Monroe states that “real buffalo… can spot a decoy a mile away” (145), which shows Monroe wants people to believe the buffalo have returned. He wants it to seem like the buffalo have finally returned and that people can feel like their culture has returned to what it was, even though he is aware that this is essentially unattainable. The main element of my project is the broken mirrors. The mirrors represent the flaw that appearance often has. Although the reflection is the exact opposite of an image, this opposition creates a false identity. The mirrors are broken to attain this flaw. By using the character of Cassie and Tecumseh, the most powerful suggestion of the theme appearance versus reality is developed by King. Tecumseh discovers that “[Cassie’s tattoo is] supposed to say AIM, but what it says in the mirror is MIA” (246). In the novel, this is when Tecumseh begins to piece together the distortion that appearances often have. As Tecumseh develops his understanding he uses the theory of the mirror to realize “[he] can see everything going on behind [him]” (222).
Through Tecumseh, King establishes that appearances are often a reflection of the past, which can often distort the truth of the present.
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